"Although we made a substantial investment in the Prototype IP, it did not find a broad commercial audience.

"Radical is a very talented team of developers, however, we have explored various options for the studio, including a potential sale of the business, and have made a difficult conclusion through the consultation process that the only remaining option is a significant reduction in staff.

"As such, some employees will remain working for Radical Entertainment supporting other existing Activision Publishing projects, but the studio will cease development of its own games going forward."

Radical Entertainment was formed in 1991 and acquired by Vivendi Games in 2005. The studio became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Activision following the firm's merger with Vivendi in 2007.

The company developed numerous open world hits, including popular PS2 title The Simpsons: Hit & Run, The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, Scarface: The World Is Yours and the Prototype series.

The studio was also reported to have been developing a sequel to Scarface, a new Crash Bandicoot title and a game based on Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Identity. All three were rumoured to have been cancelled by Activision.

Activision has closed a string of development studios in recent years.

In 2010, the publisher shut down five of its studios, including Blur developer Bizarre Creations, True Crime developer Luxoflux and Guitar Hero co-dev Budcat. Then, in 2011, it closed DJ/Guitar Hero support dev 7 Studios.

I can't honestly say I'm surprised... I'm curious how many copies it did sell in the end, or whther the team is a victim of not meeting those ubiquitous minimum metacritic scores so desired by publishers these days...

Now this is a shocker! I urge everyone to pick up Prototype 2! Not had so much fun in a sandbox game in a long, long while. 1000/1000 as well, it was the only game that I decided I wanted to make sure I got 100% because how fun it was!